Semantic Web Technologies for

Social Translucence and Privacy

Mirrors on the Web

Mathieu d’Aquin and Keerthi Thomas

Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University

@mdaquin / semprivacy.com

Privacy?

Privacy is not simply an absence of

information about us in the minds of others,

rather it is the control we have over

information about ourselves

-- Charles Fried - 1968

Privacy?

Privacy is not simply an absence of

information about us in the minds of others,

rather it is the control we have over

information about ourselves

-- Charles Fried - 1968

Privacy?

Privacy is not simply an absence of

information about us in the minds of others,

rather it is the control we have over

information about ourselves

-- Charles Fried - 1968

System user input output

Privacy?

Privacy is not simply an absence of

information about us in the minds of others,

rather it is the control we have over

information about ourselves

-- Charles Fried - 1968

System user

input

output

feedback

Privacy?

Privacy is not simply an absence of

information about us in the minds of others,

rather it is the control we have over

information about ourselves

-- Charles Fried - 1968

Web user

activities

privacy state

feedback

Or in other words,

Social Translucence

In systems with a social process component,

to achieve coherent behaviours, it is

necessary for the system to make such

behaviours visible and understandable to

the users.

-- Erickson and Kellogg, 2000

bank

bookmark

tracker

advertiser

analytics

tracker

social network

social

network

search engine

shop

employer

shop

bank

bookmark

tracker

advertiser

analytics

tracker

social network

social

network

search engine

shop

employer

shop

Web privacy

(translucent)

mirror

Examples (from mostly non-semantic worlds)

• Track the tracker

– Ghostery

– Collusion

– Spy Watch

• Personal analytics

– Wolfram|Alpha

– Moluti

– Attention Recorder

Challenges

• Collecting and managing data about the user activities and the extermal world affecting them

• Integrate this information in a coherent, explorable base

• Make sense of this information so that it can be understood (and so acted upon by the user)

?

Challenges

• Collecting and managing data about the user activities and the extermal world affecting them

• Integrate this information in a coherent, explorable base

• Make sense of this information so that it can be understood (and so acted upon by the user)

That reminds

me of

something…

Challenges

• Collecting and managing data about the user activities and the extermal world affecting them

• Integrate this information in a coherent, explorable base

• Make sense of this information so that it can be understood (and so acted upon by the user)

Ah, I know:

Semantic

Web

Technologies!

HTTP

Ontology

Web Site

Information

Location

Information

Online

Activities

Ontology

Parameters

and Website

info.

Personal

Information

Trust Model

Personal Analytics

d'Aquin, Elahi, Motta.

Semantic technologies to

support the user-centric

analysis of activity data.

SDoW 2011 at ISWC 2011

Thomas and d'Aquin. On

the privacy implications of

releasing consumer

activity data. KMi Tech.

Report kmi-13-02, 2013.

time agents

interests

d'Aquin, Elahi, Motta. Personal monitoring of web information exchange: Towards web lifelogging. WebSci10.

Trust in

websites

Sensitivity

of data

d'Aquin, Elahi, Motta. Semantic monitoring of personal web activity to support the management of trust and

privacy. SPOT 2010 at ESWC 2010

Dealing with complex and sophisticated privacy situations…

Facebook

graph API

Basic

linked data

Facebook

Ontology

Ontological

inference

(types,

relations)

Epistemic

logic theory

of Facebook

Epistemic

inference

(who knows

what)

Facebook Ontology (extract)

Person Post

Photo

Video

Status

update Comment

Agent

App

subclass

author

likes

includes

subclass

author on

Place

in

{Everyone, Friends_of_Friends, All_Friends, Custom}

scope

Example epistemic rules

Ka Post(X) :- author(X, a)

Ka Post(X) :- scope(X, All_Friends), author(X, Y), friend(Y, a)

Ka Post(X) :- includes(X,Y), friend(Y, a)

Ka wasIn(P, Y) :- includes(X,Y), in(X,P), Ka Post(X)

Ka wasWith (Y,Z) :- includes(X, Y), include(X,Z), Ka Post(X)

d'Aquin, Thomas. Modeling and reasoning upon facebook privacy settings. Demo at ISWC 2013

http://youtu.be/iFocaRtLdQg

Message and call for action

Semantic Web Technologies can help

individuals in better interpreting their own

activities in terms of privacy consequences.

Build semantic, web privacy mirrors!

Some simple examples.

Quite many more challenges.

semprivacy.com / @mdaquin